A demonstrator holds up a poster reading "#FreeDeniz" in a protest on February 25, 2017 near Frankfurt am Main to support journalist Deniz Yücel detained in Turkey. | Andreas Arnold/AFP via Getty Images

Opinion

We are Deniz Yücel

Freedom of the press is under siege not only in dictatorships, but in our own democracies.

BERLIN — Freedom of thought, the arts and the press should be inconvenient. But across the globe, the democracies of the center ground — who ought to view these freedoms as the lynchpins of their system, to be protected come what may — are weakened, weary, some of them in free fall.

The populists, the barely-democrats and dictators, meanwhile, are on the global offensive, storming from one success to the next — a path characterized by a contempt for intellectual freedoms and restrictions on expression used first and foremost as a means of intimidation.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has passed a new media law and renationalized the contemporary arts and museum scene. His government regularly harasses journalists. In Poland, where Jarosław Kaczyński simply replaces any TV-journalists he dislikes, pundits fear the introduction of amendments to the Polish media laws in line with the Russian model.

At the beginning of 2016, Putin enacted a law retroactively limiting foreign ownership of Russian media companies to 20 percent, a de facto expropriation. Such power plays are also increasingly common in the art world. At the 2014 Manifesta in St. Petersburg, several pieces by photographer Wolfgang Tillmans were deemed too provocative and not even put on display, since it was clear that they would only be taken down again.

Critical journalism is under attack from the highest echelons of power not only in the world’s greatest dictatorships but also in its most influential democracy.

China has had excellent results using this approach — the more grotesque the indignities visited upon artist Ai Weiwei and the greater the ensuing international outrage, the better. The only reports on this in China take the form of propaganda, given that the media is state-owned and strictly censored.

Critical journalism is under attack from the highest echelons of power not only in the world’s greatest dictatorships but also in its most influential democracy. In a sign of degrading relations between the U.S. White House and the press, President Donald Trump — on the warpath against the media — has declined to appear at the traditional White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

So it is hardly surprising that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has also systematically employed intimidation tactics to stifle critical press voices as a key instrument of his governing style. In the most recent case, “Welt”-reporter Deniz Yücel has been detained on charges of “propaganda in support of a terrorist association” and “inciting the public to violence.”

The state prosecutor on Monday filed for Yücel to be remanded in custody and, later that evening, the court ordered for him to be detained pending trial.

Yücel is an outstanding journalist, an independent thinker and a free spirit in every sense. As such, he has, of course, been deeply concerned by many of the recent developments in Turkey. His current treatment is intended to send a signal. This could happen to anyone who takes such liberties.

Yücel’s case is by no means an isolated incident, and should instead be seen as part of a system. What is new here is that Yücel works for a non-Turkish publication.

The outrage and solidarity the case elicited in Germany and beyond has been overwhelming. For this, I would like to express my sincerest thanks. Such solidarity, transcending the boundaries of ideological-political positioning and rivalry, is a wonderful symbol of humanity and empathy.

But more than that, it is right and it is smart. It takes a bold stance against those who would seek to intimidate. This not only dulls the intimidators’ weapons, but reverses their effect.

The more force and authority one side displays, the greater the opposition and criticism will be on the other. While one could argue that the Russian, Chinese and Turkish governments couldn’t care less about this, for us, and for the moral compass and consciousness of our liberal societies, it is far from irrelevant.

We need — perhaps even more so in the context of zealous discussions over Brexit or a certain U.S. president — good, independent and, hence, critical journalism.

We need — perhaps even more so in the context of zealous discussions over Brexit or a certain U.S. president — good, independent and, hence, critical journalism. As journalists, we must be mindful of our duties and the opportunities available to us.

In times like these, facing issues going beyond the case of Deniz Yücel or the American president’s communication style, we journalists would be well-advised to ensure our work is especially fair and accurate when dealing with opponents of our liberal values.

After all, we don’t want to make it any easier for them to discredit us. Neither do we want, under any circumstances, to resort to using the same tactics we oppose.

Instead, we must fight back with unflinching research, intelligent ideas and accurate, verified facts. We must fight to ensure, among other things, that the arts and the media remain free.

Whenever thoughts and ideas are repressed simply because we dislike them, the same can sooner or later happen to individuals — as the magistrate’s decision in Turkey illustrates.

Mathias Döpfner is chief executive officer of German media group Axel Springer, a co-owner of POLITICO’s European edition, and president of the Federation of German Newspaper Publishers. This piece originally ran in German in Die Welt.